CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE UNDER POPULIST GOVERNMENTS

Jasmin Sarah König & Tilko Swalve

University of Hamburg
Research Training Group Collective Decision-Making

Overview

This Paper

Research Question

  • How do populist parties in power use constitutional changes?

Theory

  • More Constitutional Changes under populist government
  • Effects differ with what aspect of democracy is considered

Data

  • V-Party, V-Dem & Comparative Constitutions Project
  • Country-Year Observations from 1990-2020

Research Design

  • Multi-Level Model with Country-Intercepts

THEORY

DO POPULISTS USE
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES
MORE FREQUENTLY?

POPULISM


“[Populism is an] ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.”


Mudde (2004)

POPULISM & CONSTITUIONAL CHANGE

General Will

  • Constitutions are political (Blokker 2020, Mazzoleni & Voerman 2020)
  • Mirror the will of the people (Tushnet 2015, Fabbrizi 2020)
  • Popular Sovereignty as key of democracy (Rovira Kaltwasser 2012, Mazzoleni & Voerman 2020)
  • Radical Democracy (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2013)

Homogenous People

  • No need for stable checks & balances

POPULISM & CONSTITUIONAL CHANGE

Hypothesis 1: Governments including populist actors are more likely to amend or renew constitutions than non-populist governments.

THE EFFECTS OF
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES
UNDER POPULIST GOVERNMENTS

HETEROGENOUS POPULISM

  • Exclusionary vs inclusionary populism (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2013)
    • Exclusion of people who are not considered part of the people
    • Inclusion of more people in society in politics
  • Strong impact of host-ideology on populist demands
  • Different emphasis on participation

LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

  • Understanding of a homogenous people
  • The general will as the only legitimate input in the decision-making process
    • Majoritarianism (Blokker 2019, Urbinati 2019)
    • Executive Aggrandizement (De La Torre & De Lara 2020, Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2013)
      • Disregard for checks and balances

Hypotheses 2: The quality of liberal democracy is decreased through governments including populist actors, independent of their host-ideology.

PARTICIPATION

  • Returning power back to the people
    • Advocate direct democracy (Bowler et al 2017)
    • More channels for participation
    • Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013) connect participation to left-wing populists
    • But, other authors argue that right-wing populists also campaign for reforms towards more participation (Bedock et al 2022)

Hypotheses 3: The quality of participation is increased through constitutional changes under governments, independent of their ideology.

EGALITARIANISM

  • Depends on the definition of the people
  • Culturally right-wing parties are likely to exclude groups from rights & participation
  • Economically left-wing parties are likely to redistribute
    • Increase in resources for participation
  • Culturally left-wing parties are likely to include ethnic minorities

(Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser 2013, Blokker 2019, Bugaric 2019)

Hypotheses 4: The quality of egalitarianism is increased through constitutional changes under governments including a left-wing populist actor, and decreased under governments including a right-wing populist actor.

Research Design

Data

CCP

  • Yearly Data on Constitutional Changes

V-Dem

  • Yearly Data on Democratic Quality

V-Party

  • Party Data for Election Years
  • Government Participation
  • Populism Score
  • Economic Left-Right Score
    • Fill Scores Until next Election

Coverage

  • Latin American and European States
  • 1990 - 2020

POPULISM IN POWER

Continuous V-Party Measure

  • Expert Survey from 2019
    • Retrospective coding for earlier years
  • Combination of People-Centrism & Anti-Elitism Score
  • Party-level
  • Weighted populism score calculated based on seat share
  • Continuuous score between 0 and 1

ESTIMATION H1

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • Constitutional Change Dummy

Controls

  • Left-Wing Dummy
  • Surplus Seats
  • Coalition Dummy
  • Judicial Independence (Lag, 1)
  • High Court Compliance (Lag, 1)
  • Presidentialism Score
  • Mean of the lagged Democracy Score over 5 Years

ESTIMATION H1

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • Constitutional Change Dummy

Interactions

  • Left-Wing Dummy x Weighted Populism Score
  • Mean of the lagged Democracy Score over 5 Years x Weighted Populism Score

Mixed-Effects Model

  • Random Country Intercepts

RESULTS H1

RESULTS H1

ESTIMATION H2

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • V-Dem Democracy Scores

ESTIMATION H2

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • V-Dem Democracy Scores: Liberal Democracy Index

ESTIMATION H2

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • V-Dem Democracy Scores: Civil Society Index

ESTIMATION H2

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • V-Dem Democracy Scores: Egalitarianism Index

ESTIMATION H2

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • V-Dem Democracy Scores:

Controls

  • Surplus Seats
  • Coalition Dummy
  • Democracy Score (Lag, 2)

ESTIMATION H2

Independent Variable

  • Weighted Populism Score per Government

Dependent Variable

  • V-Dem Democracy Scores:

Interactions

  • Left-Wing Dummy x Weighted Populism Score x Constitutional Change

Mixed-Effects Model

  • Random Country Intercepts

RESULTS LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

RESULTS PARTICIPATION

RESULTS EGALITARIANISM

CONCLUSION

Populism does not always use constitutional changes to decrease democratic quality

  • We need to look at specific democratic characteristics
  • We need to go beyond the salient cases
  • The often emphasized heterogeneous nature of populism also applies to their constitutional changes
  • We need to look at policies as well as rhetoric

THANK YOU

APPENDIX

Simultaneous Equation Model

Simultaneous Equation Model

BINARY POPULISM

Binary Measure

  • Expert Survey PopuList for Europe (Rooduijn et al 2019)
  • Author Coding for Latin America (Huber & Schimpf 2015, Ruth 2018, Ruth-Lovell/Grahn 2022)
  • Government level

HOWEVER

Not all results replicate with the binary coding of populists in government


Not significant but same direction

  • Likelihood of Constitutional Change
  • Effect on Egalitarian Democracy
  • Effect on Participation

Not significant but different direction

  • Effect on Liberal Democracy

THE DEMISE OF POLITICS WORKSHOP